holy smokes! TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian
Readit Newsjakzurr commented on The Mondrian introduction to functional optics marcosh.github.io/post/20... · Posted by u/marcosh
jakzurr commented on Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel theverge.com/2023/8/22/23... · Posted by u/Xeophon
This was a nice surprise to see today as an Ex-Excel developer who worked on trying to bring Python to Excel (and, I guess, failing ;)).
7+ years ago I had the option of leaving the Excel team. My then boss’s boss knew I had an interest in bringing Python to Excel and offered me a chance to tackle it if I chose to stay. What was meant to be a 6 month project turned into a ~3 year project, the Python part faded away and we ended up enabling JavaScript Custom Functions in Excel instead.
For Python we were also running ‘in the cloud’ (AzureML v1), although there was some back-and-forth on if we should run locally. I think what made the Python part disappear was our partner AzureML team re-orged, re-released, re-hired, we lost a PM and our work caught the attention of another partner team who realised they could use our code to execute their JavaScript out-of-process. And so I spent a lot of time ensuring that feature was successfully shipped at, I guess, the detriment of Python.
I had a lot of help from some strong engineers and learnt a lot. The core of the work was modifying the calculation engine of Excel to allow functions to compute asynchronously, allowing the user to continue working on other parts of their spreadsheet while the remote endpoint (be it JavaScript, Python or something else) was computing. Previously the spreadsheet would lock up while calculations were running, and that wouldn’t be cool for long-running unbounded calculations. Have to wonder if any of the stuff we built made it into this new feature.
Super great to see this and look forward to trying it out.
Recalc or die
That's really an interesting story; thanks for sharing it.
jakzurr commented on A beetle that heads for the ‘back door’ when eaten by a frog (2020) smithsonianmag.com/smart-... · Posted by u/redbell
I see a real benefit to the beetle, if it can get out. But I'm wondering, is there any benefit to the frog from consuming this type of "fiber"?
jakzurr commented on A bell that rings two notes at once (2017) [video] youtube.com/watch?v=eMgmJ... · Posted by u/djoldman
Wow, that vid really did it for me. Amazing sounds. Thanks for digging that up.
Related:
Telling the Bees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667197 - Sept 2021 (59 comments)
The 2021 comments were some of my favorites.
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jakzurr commented on How Wolfenstein 3D shocked the world, 30 years later howtogeek.com/802248/how-... · Posted by u/mariuz
Early 90's, 2-3 friends and I had all bought 486's. I got home and listened to answering machine, and the voice was practically gasping.
"You're not gonna believe this game.... You're just not gonna believe it! Uh-huh-huh, you're not gonna believe it!!"
I still wish I'd saved a recording of that.
jakzurr commented on Will boiling water ruin green tea? myjapanesegreentea.com/wi... · Posted by u/tmtvl
But does non-boiling water not work well with lower-grade tea? I drink that stuff all the time and find it best with ~180˚F water. Seems like it's reasonable to just never use boiling water for green tea.
But your take is exactly the right one: Use the tea you prefer, prepared with the water temp that gives it your favored taste.
jakzurr commented on Dang is going to have 65,535 karma points soon news.ycombinator.com/user... · Posted by u/codetrotter
For those that have missed it before, here’s a good write-up on Daniel Gackle (dang):
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
I liked that article - didn't see it until late 2020, but it's from 2019. Thanks for posting the link.